Starring: Irena Szczurowska, Jerzy Turek, Magdalena Zawadzka
Directed by: Jerzy Passendorfer
Although there is no record of the emergence of a Vistula Beat to match the phenomenon of Mersey Beat, a small number of musical comedies produced in Poland in 1960s confirm that something of the hurricane of the British Invasion, that went west to the United States, also blew east of the Iron Curtain.
Made by Polish filmmaking veteran Jerzy Passendorfer, Mocne uderzenie (Big Beat, 1966) achieved reasonable success in Central Europe. Passendorder’s feature could be mistaken for a modest Hollywood effort from the same era, if it wasn’t for the presence of Catholic blessings and vodka shots. Big Beat is a screwball comedy with Kuba (Jerzy Turek) as the slightly weird protagonist constantly tyrannised by the women in his life.
To prove that he isn’t cheating on his bride-to-be Majka (Irena Szczurowska), Kuba plunges into the local music industry in search of his look-alike, but soon finds himself absorbed by show business.
Kuba debuts as a beat combo front-man under the pseudonym of Johnny Tomala, only to discover that Majka has fallen for his more desirable carbon copy. Johnny’s pirouettes with his prop guitar and the out-of-synch playback tracks finally gave Polish audiences, a little taste of the bubblegum pop of the late 1960s.
Originally published by The Krakow Post on April 01, 2013